Mercury News editorial: Take this pipeline and stuff it

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Demonstrators march with a replica of a pipeline during a protest to demand a stop to the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline outside the White House on Sunday, Nov. 6, 2011, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

It’s inconceivable that the U.S. Senate could approve immediate construction of the Keystone XL pipeline during the same week that the National Climate Assessment report was released, documenting that the effects of human-induced climate change are already being felt across the nation.

The Senate could vote this week on the 1,700-mile Keystone project. A handful of Democratic senators who are up for re-election in November are wavering under pressure from Republicans touting the number of jobs the project will create.

Approval would mark the most shortsighted and misguided energy policy maneuver of the last decade. The Keystone XL project overpromises the number of jobs it would deliver, underestimates the risk of a significant oil spill and represents a huge step backward in the U.S. effort to wean itself from its dependence on fossil fuels.

Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Palo Alto, has noted that while the project promises thousands of temporary jobs during construction, the Keystone pipeline will support only 35 permanent jobs after it is completed. Pipeline proponents fail to mention that a similar pipeline already in existence routinely leaks — more than a dozen times in 2012 — and that a spill from the tar sands oil pipeline in Michigan in 2010 released 800,000 gallons into a creek that feeds the Kalamazoo River, costing hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up.

But those arguments pale in comparison to the most compelling reason to dump the project: The scientific evidence is overwhelming that the extraction and burning of the oil resulting from the Keystone XL project would contribute significantly to the pending global warming disaster.

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” said the authoritative report, which represents years of study by more than 200 climate scientists.

The report documents that the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels is the largest single contributor to global warming. Scientists say that California’s drought will only worsen unless the nation takes steps to slow the pouring of harmful carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The same Republican senators who want to build the Keystone XL pipeline also want to remove protections to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary west of the Mississippi, which supplies more than half of Silicon Valley’s water supply.

But building the pipeline will only make the drought worse. The report predicts that unless we reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, California will get hotter, and the Central Valley and Southern California will get drier, creating an even bigger demand to send Delta water south.

Republicans argue that building the pipeline is essential to the nation’s economic future. The climate study report proves that the environmental costs of constructing Keystone XL will dwarf any benefits it might provide.

In closed door talks, Sen. Dianne Feinstein agreed to a major new water policy for California that sells out the Delta and guts Endangered Species Act protections. Sen. Barbara Boxer is fighting the good fight to remove the rider from her comprehensive water infrastructure bill, but it may take a presidential veto.